


Some Sort of Queen of the Underworld

by elle_stone



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:20:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23604442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: Five years after the Mountain, Bellamy finds Clarke again, living with the Boat People on the Shores of the Great Lakes.A post-S2 canon-divergent fic.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 8
Kudos: 106





	Some Sort of Queen of the Underworld

**Author's Note:**

> This was written back in January for Bellarke January Joy 2020 on tumblr. I wrote it rather last minute and didn't cross-post it to AO3 at the time so... I'm doing that now!
> 
> Thank you to Essie (Pawprinterfanfic) for running this event!

Five years after the Mountain, Bellamy finds Clarke again, living with the Boat People on the shores of the Great Lakes. She wears her hair in a long braid, twined with ribbons, her clothes washed out in different shades of blue. This look suits her, he thinks, fits easily with the quiet ways she moves now and the thoughtful habits she has, a new way she’s found of thinking before speaking. For a pet, she keeps a three-headed dog named Cerberus because—“I thought you would like that,” she says, smiling, as if she always knew he’d find her again. As if she always knew they’d find themselves here, out on the bit of sand and tall, lush grasses that form the border of the land and peaceful tremors of the water, the water that looks to him like the sea.

They are sitting in low, wooden chairs that sink into the sand, that tip his body back, into a strange reclining pose to which he is unaccustomed. When he reaches out to pet the head closest to him, Cerberus snaps at him, and Clarke laughs. 

“The middle one is the friendliest,” she says. Takes his hand and teaches him how to scratch between the soft black ears.

She’s got to be some sort of queen of the underworld now—Wanheda, the word they still whisper where the Mountain fell–and wouldn’t that be fitting, like they’re slotting into fates long promised them. Bellamy the Chancellor of Arkadia, pardoned criminal-king of the sky refugees, Clarke the quiet power that rattles the Earth, but is not of the Earth. He always knew they’d be a pair. That whatever role he settled into at last, she would be his complement.

But except for her dog, she does not style herself as Hades, exudes a tremulous but certain warmth when she first hugs him, tells him that she’s a healer now and that her house sits on the water’s edge and that she keeps new, fragrant flowers in her windows all through spring. She’s done just about everything, she says, to heal herself. She’s lived alone in the woods. She has denied herself happiness and rest. She spent some time with the Plains Riders on the other side of the river, nomadic and free beneath a sky so wide it felt like home. She employed herself in learning new skills and providing use to new people: studied Grounder medicine, learned scraps of old languages, lived for a time with a man who traded among the clans, and who taught her how to make jewelry, and how to form objects out of clay. She took part in ceremonies that brought fevers and visions; she confessed herself to lovers; she collected and hoarded and then she gave away. Eventually, she found the survivors of Hydro Station, who brought her to the lake. Fitting, she’d thought, calm, not even amazed, when she first saw it. How water finds water. How certain people drift together, recognizing each other like reflections in a pool.

The Boat People live half on the land, half on the water, sailing away across the lake according to their own inscrutable patterns, always returning, again, to the homes they’ve built jutting out from the shore. Beyond the village, the dark expanse of the forest stretches, quiet, except for the occasional rustling of leaves and the scurrying of unknown animals over the twigs and tree roots. The sounds of the lake are more peaceful: the steady beating of tiny waves, the flourish of breezes across the surface, the movements of the boats–hypnotic lights in the distance at the last light of day. Everything that existed before the bombs has been taken down, taken away. There is no wreckage and there are no reminders. Even the solar panels that Hydro brought, the scavenged pieces of their destroyed ship, have been integrated into the village so easily that, when he first walked down the streets, Bellamy wondered that his neighbors had not always lived here, that their years in space had not been only a distant scrap of dream.

He thinks about the debate in Arkadia: to stay or to go; to find new land or to continue building around the downed arch of Alpha Station, with its watch towers, and its new homes, and its gate that they can close at night. The question he is often asking himself but cannot answer: is it possible to start again? More to the point: is it right?

The streets of Clarke’s village are thick-packed dirt, lined with lights, whose flames bob and sway like the lights of the boats, floating serenely across the water. She brings him fish, a wooden mug of berry juice. Cerberus growls whenever they are left alone, the sound a low thrum in the back of his throat.

She has not invited him to spend the night with her, but he knows that she will. Five years ago, she would have. They were on that brink. And now it is as if no time has passed between them: only that which was necessary to soothe the hurt and bitterness that’s haunted him. 

He does not fault her for leaving, not because it was right but because it is the past. Distant now. Unworthy of too much thought. His pain has eased, and his anger, and now all he wants is the comfort of her hand in his, the dog between them, the breeze off the lake. 

They are just where they left off, only a half-asked question and a slight nod away from falling asleep together, in the same bed. From their arms around each other, from her body tucked in against his, too warm under the blankets, the window open to the breeze. Maybe she will kiss him in the dark. Maybe they will wake each other with kisses.

He has a sudden image of them getting married in winter, on the lake. There they’ll stand, like magical beings, suspended on thick ice, their hair and shoulders slowly dusted with the lightest, softest snow. The sun will be hidden behind clouds, the light a gray haze. She’ll be holding both of his hands. 

He doesn’t know why this thought appears so fully formed, here in the slow and drowsy summer evening, but here it is, not so much _fantasy_ as _vision_. And so–he’s heard stranger stories. He’s seen other images, which he cannot explain. He’s picked out voices across the distance. He’s lived with ghosts.

“What are you thinking about?” Clarke asks him.

Bellamy considers for a long time. 

Then he kisses her knuckles and says, “What we’ll do next.”


End file.
